43 Remix: “The Monkey Bars Are Burning”
[Anonymous]
Instructor Juliette Holder
ENG 1013.06
5 December 2022
Cover Letter
For this remix assignment, I reinvented my learning narrative essay entitled “The Monkey Bars Are Burning” into a visual mode by creating a painting. The essay is about how my grandfather helped me learn how to communicate and how I learned to communicate in a world without him. The essay deals with grief and isolation that comes with the loss of a loved one. My audience for this Multimodal Remix is fellow artists or those who appreciate art, which differs from the original audience; this audience is more casual and allows for a looser interpretation of the artwork.
Art, specifically painting, is something very important to me. There is a line in my essay that states, “Art is an experience in which a person can relay their truths; a cathartic goodbye to whatever may haunt their lives.” I knew as soon as I was given this project that I wanted to do an art piece as to how I reconciled the loss of my grandfather.
The process for creating this art piece first involved sketching. I sketched out thumbnails and listed out the materials I would need to find amongst my art supplies or go out and buy. One of the first challenges I faced while collecting my supplies was deciding what size canvas would be the most appropriate. I already had smaller canvas panels, but I concluded that the panels would be too small for the painting to be as effective in getting my message across. These are big, scary, feelings I was trying to express, which warranted a big, scary canvas. I went to a few different art stores before winding up at Walmart where there was a 24 x 20-inch canvas just waiting for me. During the time in which I was scouring various stores for art supplies, I had also contacted my parents and asked them to send me a few copies of my grandpa’s newspaper, the Falfurrias Facts, so that I could use it to create a border around the canvas. Collaging the edges of my canvas is a stylistic choice that I make with all of my art pieces and has become a staple of mine over these last few years. I find that it helps set the tone of the painting or art work. Overall, the materials I used were acrylic paint and cheap, horribly made paint brushes, and news paper.
After gathering all the materials I would need I began to work on painting. I went through many phases while working on this piece. I sketched out a hand reaching out toward a monkey bar; however, this metal bar is not what it seems. The monkey bar is burning, and the Spanish phrase “si se puede” is inscribed into the scalding metal. The imagery I was trying to create was one of the most difficult things about this painting. To create the image that the monkey bar was burning required a lot of strategic thinking in the color’s placement. Same goes for the hand—I had to ask myself every time I worked on the painting: is this really what a hand looks like? I had to stop and ignore the hand fo